1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to video conferencing and more specifically to integrating audio and video conferencing capabilities.
2. Introduction
Most video conferencing systems are “all-in-one” devices. These systems often require wired connections between the various components, such as microphones, speakers, monitors, and cameras. In certain cases, recent wireless technologies, such as Wireless HDMI and Wireless USB, allow some of these components to be connected wirelessly. However, these wireless connections are generally fixed between the wirelessly-connected components, and therefore restrict mobility. Moreover, since most devices, such as computers and phones, do not typically have built-in Wireless HDMI or Wireless USB capabilities, they require hardware “dongles” or adapters to provide wireless connectivity with other components. This greatly complicates matters for the user.
Also, current video conferencing systems do not utilize other new and powerful wireless technologies, such as WIFI direct, to integrate different devices or components. Moreover, current solutions fail to use wireless capabilities to provide greater mobility while allowing devices to seamlessly integrate other devices during a conference and automatically extend the conferencing capabilities utilized during the conference. For example, current solutions do not allow an audio-only conferencing device to automatically add video conferencing to an audio conference when the audio-only conferencing device enters the vicinity of a video conferencing device with wireless capabilities. With current solutions, if a user is on an audio-only call through a mobile phone and the user wishes to add high quality video beyond the capabilities of the mobile phone, the user must manually transfer or reestablish the entire call on another device.